VG Siddhartha, the son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna and the founder-owner of the chain of Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), has gone missing from Mangaluru in Karnataka. As per the reports, a new letter written by VG Siddhartha to board directors has surfaced into public now.
In a letter written to the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) board, founder VG Siddhartha has said that he failed to create the right profitable business model despite taking best efforts.
“After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as another 20,000 jobs in technology company where I have been a large shareholder since its founding, I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts,” wrote CCD founder VG Siddhartha in his letter.
“I would like to say I gave it all, I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend,” Siddhartha wrote in his letter to the board.
Siddhartha further added that he faced tremendous pressure from other lenders led to “me succumbing to the situation.”
“There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG income tax in the form of attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking the position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us,” he said in the letter.
“I sincerely request each of you to be strong and to continue running these businesses with new management,” said VG Siddhartha in his letter to the Board of Directors and his Coffee Day family, adding that “every financial transaction” is his responsibility.
“My team, auditors and senior management are totally unaware of all my transactions. The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family. My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission. I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me,” Siddhartha wrote in the letter.
VG Siddhartha went missing after he got off from his car near a bridge across the Nethravathi River near Mangalore, about 375km from Bengaluru, but did not return even after an hour.
The police officials have begun a search in the area after Siddhartha’s driver filed a complaint with the police on Tuesday morning raising suspicion if the person who jumped off the bridge was indeed the CCD founder.
